Leadville 100 News

The 2011 Leadville 100 mountain bike is not much over a week away on August 13th.

For those that are doing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race this year, are thinking about doing it sometime or just curious about it, the Fat Cyclist has put together a live chat for today starting at 1 PM mountain time. In addition to the Fat Cyclist there will be Leadville 100 legends Dave Wiens, Ricky McDonald, Dean Cahow and Cole Chlouber. Go here to ask your questions.

Last year’s Leadville 100 winner and record holder will not be at the Leadville 100 this year due to it conflicting with the Tour of Utah. When asked if he’ll do Leadville again he said, “I don’t know. It might be best to do it once, have the record, and just leave it at that. It’s a very epic race, and I’m glad I did it, but at the same time it was pretty damn hard. I’m not sure I ever want to go and suffer like that again.” Read more here.

At this year’s final Leadville 100 qualifying race in Crested Butte last weekend, Lance Armstrong, 2009 Leadville 100 winner, showed up and won by 3 seconds. His answer to whether he’d be returning to Leadville was “No. That’s too much for me. I’m too old. I’m retired.” Leadville 100 women’s champion, Rebecca Rusch, won the women’s qualifier and was 5th overall. More on the Crested Butte qualifier here.

I spent last weekend riding on the Leadville 100 course and did about 75 miles of riding. There were lots of other riders out pre-riding the course. The course is in great shape with normally rough sections on the Columbine Climb and St Kevins graded relatively smooth.